St. Louis Man Pleads Guilty in a Tax Refund Scheme

St. Louis MO --- Tyron F. Kemp, 30, of St. Louis and Riverview, Florida, pled guilty today to two counts of filing false claims with the Internal Revenue Service as part of a bogus tax refund scheme.  The maximum punishment is 10 years in prison and a fine of $500,000.00.  Kemp appeared before United States District Judge Audrey F. Fleissig.  Sentencing is scheduled for September 4, 2019.

In court papers, Kemp admitted to electronically filing 37 false tax returns with the IRS from October 2013 through March 2015.  A total of $155,775.00 in refunds were claimed on those returns and funds totaling $54,390.00 were paid out by the IRS.  Kemp admitted that he caused those refunds to be paid out to prepaid cards, which he controlled, and that he spent the money, most of it in St. Louis.  He electronically filed most of the returns from a location in the 3000 block of Delmar in the City of St. Louis. 

Kemp spent most of his adolescent years, including high school, in Tucson AZ.  He moved back to St. Louis in 2013 and began filing the false tax returns using names and personal identifiers of persons he knew in Tucson---all without their permission.  In addition to compromising names and social security numbers, Kemp made unauthorized use of the names of minor children in claiming dependent exemptions on the returns.  He also prepared and submitted W-2 forms with the returns falsely showing wage amounts and taxes withheld in amounts designed to generate refunds.  He often showed APAC Customer Services, Inc., one of his former employers in Tucson, as the employer business on those false W-2 forms. 

Kemp pled guilty to two false claim charges in which he included the names of individuals he was familiar with in Tucson.  Both returns included addresses with which those persons were not associated and W-2 forms falsely showing APAC as the employer.  The refunds claimed on those returns were $5,277.20 and $5,044.00, respectively.

The case was investigated by the IRS Criminal Investigation offices in Tucson and St. Louis.